p.1 #1 · Film Might Contain More Information Than You Think...
Clearly, the best way to demonstrate this is in a wet darkroom, but for me those years are long gone.
I realized that I have tens of thousands of images to copy from when I started photography with my home built darkroom in 1966 until I purchased a Nikon Coolscan LS-9000 somewhere in 2004. The Nikon does a great job, but is slower than digitizing via camera.
I’ve been working on this for the last six months with the goal of getting the most out of my images and developing an easy to repeat workflow. I have an unused Easy35, because early on I figured out that much that I was going to copy was medium format and I read of negative reports regarding the Easy120.
If you are going with a copy stand, make sure it is rock solid and sits on a solid base all the way down to the floor. I found that a heavy duty stand is a must, but then again I was copying with an A7CR/Tamron 90mm macro and used all Negative Supply via a large kit. When the X2Dii came out, I decided to use my X2D to copy. The problem is that the XCD Macro is 1:2, so I use an Hasselblad XH adapter and the HC 120mm Macro ii with a Hasselblad 9mm extension tube. I use the Phocus Deskktop software to tether to the camera and use four shot pixelshift, which is very easy to use in that all is automated within Phocus. The very hefty copy stand is important when making contact sheets. I do this by copying a full page of negatives/slides in their three hole plastic pages and illuminated with a Kaiser Slimlite Plano. I use a piece of antireflective plastic to hold everything flat and the heavy camera/lens must be raised around one meter to get the whole page. I don’t use pixelshift, but the contact sheets show a great deal of detail. I only store the JPG here.
The end result of this is that I discovered the incredible resolution and colors of negatives/transparencies and so I’ve pulled my film cameras from the safe after 15 years of sleep and have been mainly been shooting film again. Two weeks ago I started to accumulate what I needed to develop B&W and color. I ordered parts for my old Jobo CPE-2 Plus, bought a small refrigerator for chemicals and a storage cabinet for everything else. Within two weeks I should be back to developing my own film.
There is an unbelievable amount of information in film. I’ve settled on shooting Portra 100 & 800, Ektar 100, E100, Delta 100, TMax 400, Neopan 400 , Tri-X and TMax 3200 @ 1200. 35mm is fully captured with my setup, but I haven’t shot Leica Monopan 50 like film. 645 pushes my setup to the limit when using film like Ektar. 6x7 and films like Portra 160 and Ektar probably exceed what 100Mpix can capture. Do I need that kind of resolution.. mostly not, but sometimes yes. More than just resolution, the combination of the X2D, Phocus Desktop and four shot pixelshift results in some beautiful colors and great contrast/micro-contrast without much work in post… if any.
This all started with the desire to digitize my old negatives and slides.
